Ardashir I
Founder of the Sasanian Empire (r. 224–242 CE), who defeated the last Parthian king and established the Sasanian dynasty with Zoroastrianism as state religion.
Read in context →Biography
Ardashir I (c. 180–242 CE) founded the Sasanian Empire, the last pre-Islamic Persian dynasty, by defeating the Parthian (Arsacid) king Artabanus IV at the Battle of Hormozgan in 224 CE. Beginning as a local ruler in Fars, he unified the Iranian plateau, was crowned King of Kings at Ctesiphon around 226, and established a centralized state closely tied to Zoroastrian religion. His reign set the political, religious, and artistic templates — including investiture iconography and royal titulature — followed by Sasanian rulers for four centuries. In his final years he crowned his son Shapur I as co-ruler before dying in early 242. A contested point is the precise date of his death and the length of the Ardashir–Shapur co-regency, for which the Cologne Mani Codex is the key evidence.
Quotes & narrations
«This is the figure of the Mazda-worshipping lord Ardashir, King of Kings of Iran, whose lineage is from the gods, son of Pāpak the king.»
Related entities
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Ardašīr I i. History"
- Touraj Daryaee, Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (2009)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Ardashir I"